Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. And when the fancy takes them, they sadistically subject Tory governments visibly on the skids to cunningly-designed symbolic torment, calibrated perfectly to maximise exposure of the unwilling victims’ manifold ethical shortcomings. In their ways, the Profumo scandal, cash for questions and Grenfell Tower are all modern-day […]
Posts under ‘Conservatives’
General Election 2017: For the many, not the few
Jun 23rd, 2017 by Bryan Gould.The British general election has produced an impressive list of casualties. Theresa May may survive for the time being but her gamble on a snap election so as to increase her majority – and her authority, especially in the forthcoming Brexit talks – has spectacularly misfired. Even with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party […]
Can Theresa May survive?
Jun 21st, 2017 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Theresa May is determined to grab the worst Prime Minister ever crown from her predecessor, at least if her incompetence over the Grenfell tragedy is anything to go by. Her initial visit to the site to meet emergency service workers but pointedly not surviving residents was incredibly cold, and incredibly damaging. For millions, May’s behaviour […]
A nation divided
Jun 16th, 2017 by Ewan Gibbs.The June 2017 general election will be remembered as an occasion where the political map of the UK was dramatically and unexpectedly redrawn. This was the case no more than in Scotland where the outcome indicates the birth of a three-party system. The major headline was the SNP losing its hegemonic status, going from 56 […]
Theresa May’s Blairite Manifesto
May 24th, 2017 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Chatting to Alex Nunns on the Twitter earlier, he suggested the Conservative (and Unionist) Manifesto was a Blairite document. And he’s entirely right. Not because of the substance of the politics, but because what Theresa May and “her team” are trying to do with it. Looking at the manifesto, if Labour’s was the best manifesto […]
What is the ‘Dementia Tax’?
May 22nd, 2017 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.On page 67 of the Conservative Party manifesto (analysis here), Theresa May’s “team” announces a significant shift in the way elderly care is going to be paid for. Their plans have generated a great deal of controversy which, combined with means testing for winter fuel payments and ending the triple lock on pensions, moves the […]
No houses, no lunches, no foreigners: Theresa May launches her vision for Britain
May 19th, 2017 by James Elliott.Only death and taxes Theresa May’s shock announcement has been that her next government would make more people pay for their own social care at home. Under new means-testing rules, pensioners would start to pay for care at home as long as they had assets of more than £100,000, rather than the current £23,500, but the new […]
Labour, the elections, and the polls
May 2nd, 2017 by Peter Rowlands.There is a tendency on the left to dismiss opinion polls, partly, and fairly, because they have proved to be significantly inaccurate in the two most important votes of the last two years, the 2015 election and the 2016 EU Referendum, and partly, and usually misguidedly, that what they tell us can always be overcome. […]
The Tories’ campaign strategy
Apr 24th, 2017 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.And they’re off! This is less a two-horse race of LibDem leaflet fame, and more a thorough bred tearing up the track as the knackered and no-hopers settle into a canter. At least that’s how the Conservatives and their helpful friends in the press and broadcast media see it. And, understandably, they want to maintain […]
Theresa May calls a snap General Election for June 8th
Apr 19th, 2017 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Ask me this morning if there would be a general election, and I’d have said no. The stars were aligned against it, and yet here we are, stumbling about with our ghast well and truly flabbered. Her shock announcement caught everyone on the hop, and Westminster and its echo chamber are gripped by elation and […]